Making money on Medivh, part 1: Getting started

This robe matches my eyes!

I recently rolled a new character on Medivh to hang out with Liala and Snack and others from Twitter, plus I wanted to check out a number of Alliance questlines and zones that I'd been neglecting. My choice? A Worgen priest, as I'm ridiculously in love with Shadow and Discipline right now, and I'd been meaning to sit down and play through the Worgen starting zone for ages.

Of course, one of the traditional problems with starting on a new server is having zero funds. Fortunately, I always like the challenge of whipping up some fast money. Vidyala often laments that I have almost as much gold as she does on her home server, Moonrunner, where my highest character is a level 70 Death Knight.

This is a quick rundown of what I've done so far on Medivh.




Day 1 (Wealth: 1.5g)

First of all, I got a gathering skill ASAP. This is a no-brainer! I chose Herbalism over Mining. I had no idea which was more profitable, but I prefer the self-heal over the additional hit points.

By the end of the Worgen starting area, I had ~1.5g and 4-5 stacks of entry-level herbs. The first thing I did was get the hell out of Darnassus (which I hate) and take the boat to Darkshore! I was very excited to see all the cool new quests there.

Unfortunately, the boat to Darkshore apparently now goes to Stormwind. So I sighed and headed to the Auction House instead.

The first thing I did was toss up my herbs at a decent undercut of the competition. I was willing to sacrifice a bit of profit for a guaranteed sale, as I needed some startup cash. With my remaining money I trained Enchanting and bought the Strange Dusts and Lesser Mystic Essences for sale, as well as 5 Copper Rods. I then did a quick circuit around town, purchasing some Vanishing Powder at the Inscription shop and some Common Gray Shirts from the clothier.

I threw these all up on the AH at market value (which in each case was at least 4-5 times their purchase price), then bought a few entry-level green items and disenchanted them into more Strange Dusts. I decided to hold onto these until I saw how active the Strange Dust market was here.

I also watched the auctions about to end, and bid on a few whose current bids were only a few silver. I didn't win them all, but I did end up with a Silver Bar (which resold for 2.5g) and five various Skyflare Diamonds(!) which have the potential to net me a decent profit.

I usually go over the cheapest auctions if I'm really desperate for money, looking for any items where the buyout price is actually less than the vendor price. It's painfully tedious but when you're just starting out every few coppers help. However, on Medivh there were ZERO such items!

With no remaining funds and no quick easy cash to be made from vending, I logged off for the night.




Day 2 (Wealth: 35g)

And this one matches my tabard!!

The next time I logged in I was pleased to see that a few of my auctions had sold, so I decided to increase my activity - vanity pets. I bought a few more shirts, then headed to the cat vendor in Elwynn Forest and bought two of each cat, then hearthed to Darnassus and bought some owls. The shirts are going for around 10g each and the vanity pets, 10-30g each. I also cleaned out the Enchanting supplies vendors in both cities.

Right now I'm sitting at about 12g. If all my auctions sell (which I don't expect them to) I'd rake in another 100-200g. Nothing spectacular, but certainly better than a few days ago! And this was with very minimal effort and time expenditure. I could go out and farm herbs, sure - but why bother when it's so much easier to multiply my funds right there in town?

I also plan on buying enough greens to get my Enchanting up to 25, which is the magic number - at that skill level you are able to disenchant level 16-20 green items, which net 5x Strange Dusts. When dusts are selling for 50s each, and there's no shortage of greens that turn into 5 dusts available for 1g or less...well, it's pretty simple math. The Strange Dust market is my #1 favorite easy money-maker. There's always low-level greens available for cheap prices, plus beginning Jewelcrafters and Blacksmiths churn out Solid Bronze Rings and Rough Bronze Leggings in mass quantities. If you're lucky you can snatch up a good dozen or so of these for 10-15s each, which is a HUGE profit.




Day 3 (Wealth: 130g)


Sold a few owls for 30+ gold, some Stylish Black Shirts for 12g each, and a few stacks of Strange Dust for 10g each. I also managed to win a Blackwater Cutlass for 18s and 14 Sungrass for 19s, which should both resell pretty nicely. Copper Rods are selling nice and steady for anywhere from 75-90s, and Lesser Magic Essences are also regularly going for the same amount.

I just bid on two stacks of Deepsea Sagefish that were ending soon, and won them. The winning bid amounts were 29g and 7g, pretty steep considering my limited funds, but a quick check of the competition here shows that stacks are going for ~160g. Which is WAY more than on my home server. However, knowing how valuable it is at endgame (they're used for +90 stat buff food), I figure at worst they'll go for at least 30g, so I'm not worried.

The Sagefish were an example of how my game knowledge helped me find a bargain. But don't let it backfire! I just saw a stack of 3 Heavenly Shards for 36g buyout, which on Drenden would be a ridiculous bargain. But I took an extra moment to check out the other Heavenly Shards for sale here, and saw that 11-12g each was the going rate. Don't assume that the economy on a new server will match your previous knowledge! It's easy to get burned this way.

Something I do regularly at the AH is check not only the auctions about to end, but also the ones with the most time left on them. I do this because these ones are guaranteed to be auctions that were just listed moments ago, and if you get lucky, you can snag unbelievable deals if someone screwed up while posting their auctions. You won't see new auctions that were listed for 12 or 24 hours, but you will see 48 hour ones. I've gotten a level 85 epic gun for 16g this way, which resold for 25,000g the next day. And even if you don't see any mistakes to snatch up, you're still getting the first look at fresh auctions, and you may discover some nice bargains.

One such bargain that I just found were two stacks of Iron Ore for 1g buyout. Investigating further, I saw a few more stacks at similar prices, which baffles me. Even if Iron Ore is extremely common here, it should still - at the least - crush into useful gems worth a few gold! I shrugged and bought them all. I'll look into this more later.

Right now as I was writing this my two posted stacks of Strange Dust sold, for 10g each. I listed two more stacks at 12g and they sold within seconds. Interesting! I quickly bought all the 16-20 greens available for under 1g, converted them all into dusts and threw them up for 15g a stack. I looked at who had won my auctions, and saw that it was a competitor who was listing them for 20g/stack! But there were still plenty of 16-20 greens still available, which meant one of two things - he was either bad at playing this game, or didn't have access to an Enchanter. Either way, I was happy to let him line my pockets for minimal effort. Even if he did sell all those stacks for 20g each, I still made my profit, so I'm happy. At this point in the game I'm not worried about trying to push out any competition.

Furthermore, while buying my disenchanting fodder, I came across this - what an unexpected bonus!


With two BOE blues in my possession, I decided to wait before blindly throwing them up for sale. Without knowing the economy here, I could be wasting my time or cheating myself out of easy money. Next up - research!

8 Responses Subscribe to comments

  1. gravatar
    Zel

    You look extremely silly in that dress.

    March 1, 2011 at 2:46 PM

  2. gravatar
    Vidyala

    I look forward to hearing about how you have yet another character with more money than mine on a server.

    Actually, this is really interesting! I like "projects'!

    March 1, 2011 at 2:46 PM

  3. gravatar
    Rades

    Actually Zel, I meant to have little comments beneath the pictures - I forgot! Going back to add those now. :D

    March 1, 2011 at 2:48 PM

  4. gravatar
    Redbeard

    I've discovered that there's almost nothing in the AH with Northrend greens that DC into Infinite Dust. If there's a niche where people want to make some cash, instead of vendoring those items DC or AH them instead.

    (Why yes, I'm leveling Enchanting. Does it show?)

    March 1, 2011 at 4:25 PM

  5. gravatar
    Rades

    Red, I plan on touching on Infinite Dust in part 3 of this series! But the short version is it's often a lot more profitable right now to buy cheap Abyss Crystals and get an Enchanter to shatter them into Enchanting mats. Or buy cheap Wrath Epics and DE them first. Might be worth looking into, if you have access to an Enchanter who can shatter them for you!

    March 1, 2011 at 4:29 PM

  6. gravatar
    Redbeard

    Rades, Neve is in that gap where she's not quite high enough to work with Dream Shards and Abyss Crystals. Additionally, she's somewhere in Uldum right now so that if she took time off to go bash mobs in Icecrown for green drops, she'd fall behind in getting to L85.

    And I really don't want to have Vid gloat that first and only L85 would be Tom, the Draenei Pally...

    March 1, 2011 at 6:45 PM

  7. gravatar
    The Giant

    I do believe you went on the wrong boat from Teldrassil. There are 3 boats leaving the coast there.

    The western boat takes you to Azuremyst Isle and Exodar.
    The southern boat to the Stormwind Harbor.
    The eastern boat takes you to Darkshore, which is the boat you were looking for.

    March 10, 2011 at 3:20 AM

  8. gravatar
    Rades

    That must be what happened! As a Hordie, I'd only traveled to Darnassus via the Auberdine boats before, and I hadn't done even that in ages. So I didn't even know there WERE different boats now! I just assumed the same dock I'd always gone to would take me to Auberdine. Good to know though! :)

    March 10, 2011 at 9:38 AM